Going solo: the social organisation of drug dealing within a London street gang

Abstract

This paper presents a single case study of one street gang in one London borough. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 12 gang members, or former gang members, and seven practitioners. The practitioners and gang members / ex-gang members reported different perspectives on how the gang was structured and drug dealing was organised. The gang members / ex-gang members suggested that the gang is a loose social network with little recognisable formal organisation. Although individual gang members sell drugs, the gang should not be viewed as a drug dealing organisation. Rather it is a composition of individual drug dealers who cooperate out of mutual self-interest. Therefore, some gang members are best described as independent entrepreneurs while others are subcontractors looking to 'go solo'. The seven practitioners, however, tended to describe a more hierarchically structured gang, with formal recruitment processes. This divergence of perspective highlights an important consideration for policy and research.1 School of Business and Law, University of East London, University Square, Stratford, London, UK; Criminology, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Europea, Madrid, Spain. Corresponding author: J.Windle@uel.ac.uk Windle, J. and Briggs, D. (2015). ''Goin Solo: The Social Organisation of Drug Dealers within a London Gang'. Journal of Youth Studies, 18(9): 1170-1185 Pre-publication copy 2 Going Solo: The Social Organisation of Drug Dealing within a London Street GangIn recent years, political and social concern has increased around the proliferation of street gangs 2 in the UK. David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, has described them as:Territorial, hierarchical and incredibly violent … mostly composed of young boys... They earn money through crime, particularly drugs, and are bound together by an imposed loyalty to an authoritarian gang leader (cited in Wintour et al. 2011).There is, however, a lack of empirical research on how gangs are structured, and their role in drug distribution in the British context Ralphs et al. 2009). This paper is based upon a time-limited, exploratory study conducted over seven months in 2012/2013. During this period we interviewed 12 gang members and former gang members, and seven practitioners in one London borough (Rose Borough) with, what might be termed, an emerging gang problem (see Decker and Curry 2002;Fox and Lane 2010). The research objectives were to investigate how the boroughs gangs were structured, and how the gangs organised drug dealing. The findings are presented here in the form of a case study of one of the boroughs gangs: Red Gang. 3 2 This paper takes as a starting point the Eurogang definition of a street gang as a 'durable and street orientated youth groups whose involvement in illegal activity is part of their group identity ' (Klein et al., 2006. p. 414).We do, however, acknowledge that the term street gang is highly contested. For in-depth definitional debates please refer to Joseph and Gunter (2011), Smithson and colleagues (2012....

The material, moral, and affective worlds of dealing and crime among young men entrenched in an inner city drug scene

“…They were also frequently subcontracted by gang members – who, it should be noted, were themselves likely very low level players in gang hierarchies – to engage in robbery and car theft, and the delivery of brutal physical punishments related to drug debts and other kinds of “beefs” (i.e., heated conflicts). Similar to what has been observed elsewhere (Densley, 2013; Windle & Briggs, 2015a), after an initial period of more close supervision, this kind of loosely gang affiliated, street level dealing and crime was usually carried out quite independently by young men, who could themselves become a boss to their own set of street level workers as they were given increasing amounts of responsibility and drugs to move by their own employers. All of these employer-employee relationships could dissolve quite abruptly – as, for example, when a young person ended up “doing their own product” (i.e., using the drugs they were supposed to be selling) and could no longer maintain a profitable relationship with their employer.…”

“…Given the ephemeral quality of relationships between street level, subcontracted workers and gang member employers, young men’s loyalty seemed to be more to this particular moral logic of gang (i.e., keeping your mouth shut and taking a pinch), as opposed to a particular employer with whom they had developed an enduring friendship (Windle & Briggs, 2015a). However, it should also be noted that young men could face extreme physical punishments from a wide variety of social actors on the streets (not just gang members) for breaking the much more widely shared and strictly enforced moral code that dictates that “no one talks to the cops” under any circumstances (Fast, Shoveller, Small, & Kerr, 2013).…”

The Unusual Suspects

“…Indeed, within the criminological and sociological literatures drug markets are commonly manifested within the context of violent and at times territorial street gangs (or street gang affiliates) operating among impoverished minority populations; this trend is true of studies from the United Kingdom (e.g. Harding, 2014;Windle & Briggs, 2015); the United States (e.g. Jacobs, 2000;Venkatesh, 2006); Scandinavia (e.g.…”

‘Vulnerable’ Kids Going Country: Children and Young People’s Involvement in County Lines Drug Dealing

“…County lines conversely involve operators in hub cities travelling to towns and cities within a wide radius of their home area. Not only do they deliver their product to that location as a ‘weight’ for wholesale, but they also retail it there using a combination of controlled and controlling young sellers from the urban hub, as well as vulnerable individuals from the new locality (Coomber and Moyle, 2012; Robinson et al, 2019; Windle and Briggs, 2015a).…”